Open Design was Mr. Baur's title for his patron sponsored Livejournal blog. Kobold Quarterly was Mr. Baur's title of the quarterly print magazine published by Open Design. They got combined into Kobold Press to unite the brand and prevent confusion.

Open Design functioned on a patronage version of funding, very much like Renaissance artists. It was crowdfunding before crowdfunding was cool. Mr. Baur would poll several possible subjects, solicit donations, design it with patron feedback, and release the finished product to just the patrons.

Yes, snob appeal and exclusivity were selling points. It was *awesome.* In a lot of ways, I miss it. The change to Kickstarter allows a much broader audience, more depth for funding, and better pay. And a lot of the earlier projects were rereleased to the public. But I still miss it.

I can provide a listing of the first 27 Open Design/Kobold Press crowd sourced projects.

Thanks Thorr-Kan.

The interesting thing from your list is that Zobeck doesn't appear until the 6th project. I don't know if the earlier (and later) products were all intended to be part of the setting that evolved into Midgard, or if some of them have been retconned into Midgard. (Dark Deeds in Freeport is definitely a Freeport product.) I guess that, when Open Design started Wolfgang Baur could have gone in a number of different directions and that the response of the Open Design backers must have had some level of influence.

thorr-kan wrote:Open Design was Mr. Baur's title for his patron sponsored Livejournal blog. Kobold Quarterly was Mr. Baur's title of the quarterly print magazine published by Open Design. They got combined into Kobold Press to unite the brand and prevent confusion.

I actually prefer the name "Kobold Press" to "Open Design" but I think that "Open Design" was probably a better name for the concept of Wolfgang Baur writing stuff on a blog and collaborating with fans.

thorr-kan wrote:Open Design functioned on a patronage version of funding, very much like Renaissance artists. It was crowdfunding before crowdfunding was cool. Mr. Baur would poll several possible subjects, solicit donations, design it with patron feedback, and release the finished product to just the patrons.

I've seen a couple of the old posts about Open Design, while searching for things. But I don't really think I understand the context as much as someone who was there at the time. I certainly don't know what the vibe of the Open Design fan community was like. It's easier to see that with current Kickstarter projects (as Kickstarter encourages fans of anything being Kickstarted to spam their friends to death, in an attempt to unlock cool stretch goals). Open Design sounds like it would have been a lot more subtle and slow and immediate, creating a constant move forward rather than explosions of funding for large numbers of things that don't happen until several months later.

thorr-kan wrote:Yes, snob appeal and exclusivity were selling points. It was *awesome.* In a lot of ways, I miss it. The change to Kickstarter allows a much broader audience, more depth for funding, and better pay. And a lot of the earlier projects were rereleased to the public. But I still miss it.

I'm not sure that Open Design looked like snobbery to me, but it did look something that I didn't "get" because I didn't know anyone who could talk to me about what was being done. I think that Kobold Press has broken through some sort of "surface tension" that has allowed it to connect to people who are not yet customers.

The thing I think I've missed, by not being an Open Design backer, is the time period where there was no Midgard and people saw Midgard start to appear and then got a name for it and saw details being fleshed out. Looking back, you can see the entire product line, so any speculation on what Wolfgang Baur might do is probably all gone.

It's my understanding that the old Open Design projects were always set in Wolfgang Baur's home setting. If this wasn't explicitly the case at the time, they've been retconned in since then. I say this because most of the old Open Design products have been published for different systems and made available to the general public. This has been done under the Kobold Press name, and in several cases, the products were included in Midgard Kickstarters. Castle Shadowcrag was just included in the revised Midgard Campaign Setting Kickstarter. Empire of the Ghouls' setting content was used in the Imperial Gazetteer, and is clearly the same empire found in the Midgard Campaign Setting. Six Arabian Nights was expanded to Eleven Arabian Nights and included in the Southlands Kickstarter. Halls of the Mountain King was published for Pathfinder as a Midgard product.

Hi all. Huge fan of the old Patronage projects though I was late to the concept, only joining toward the end of Dark Deed and Midgard. I had a lot of fun during the Journeys to the West development. The old forums were full of back and forth on story, site and theme development. I miss that as the Kickstart have less crowd interaction in that style.

Regards,
Old Man

Last edited by Old Man on Sun Jan 21, 2018 9:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Old Man wrote:Hi all. Huge fan of the old Patronage projects though I was late to the concept, only joining toward the end of Dark Deed and Midgard. I had a lot of fun during the Journeys to the West development. The old forums were full of back and forth on story, site and theme development. I miss that as the Kickstart have less crowd interaction in that style.

Are you familiar with RPG Design Camp? They've had two successful Kickstarters in the past year, and run the project in a collaborative way with their backers. It's intended to be similar to the Open Design process, and features some of the former Open Design patrons/designers.

Old Man wrote:Hi all. Huge fan of the old Patronage projects though I was late to the concept, only joining toward the end of Dark Deed and Midgard. I had a lot of fun during the Journeys to the West development. The old forums were full of back and forth on story, site and theme development. I miss that as the Kickstart have less crowd interaction in that style.

Are you familiar with RPG Design Camp? They've had two successful Kickstarters in the past year, and run the project in a collaborative way with their backers. It's intended to be similar to the Open Design process, and features some of the former Open Design patrons/designers.

Yes I am. I backed the first and passed on the second. I was not interested in the subject of the 2nd. Am looking for another campaign supplement/setting/adventures style of development.

It's my understanding that the old Open Design projects were always set in Wolfgang Baur's home setting.

Oooh! Now that's interesting.

That implies there could have been some sort of "proto-Midguard" that Wolfgang Baur was working on privately.

I know that Rich Green (who I think was involved in some Open Design stuff) was running an Al-Qadim game with his own homebrew city, called Parsantium, and that he went on to clean out all the Al-Qadim IP and build a new campaign setting around his own work.

Because Rich Green blogged his own stuff, you can get an idea of how long the proto-Parsantium era was before it got a commercial reboot. Does anyone know about homebrew gaming sessions that Wolfgang Baur ran that included elements later recycled as part of Open Design or Kobold Press products? Is it possible to point to any old notes and identify pre-commercial origins of the setting?

Hi all. Huge fan of the old Patronage projects though I was late to the concept, only joining toward the end of Dark Deed and Midgard. I had a lot of fun during the Journeys to the West development. The old forums were full of back and forth on story, site and theme development. I miss that as the Kickstart have less crowd interaction in that style.

Thanks Old Man.

I think it's a shame those old forums went down.

We have a growing community here, and obviously I'd love to see more Midgard fans (old as well) come here, but not at the expense of an existing community (especially one with a ton of conversations in the era where parts of the setting were still being built).

I think that one of my issues with Kickstarter. There is a big massive push to get a lot of money in one go. And once the money comes in the person running the project has to run off to get stuff done. And the more money they pull in, the busier they are. The Open Design thing (and the Patreon thing) seem to be more of a slow push, with a creative person having a steady stream of income that funds a steady amount of work. That seems to be a bit more stable to me, although I can't doubt the fact that Kickstarter has brought Midgard to the attention of a lot of people who had not heard of it before.

Old Man wrote:Hi all. Huge fan of the old Patronage projects though I was late to the concept, only joining toward the end of Dark Deed and Midgard. I had a lot of fun during the Journeys to the West development. The old forums were full of back and forth on story, site and theme development. I miss that as the Kickstart have less crowd interaction in that style.

Are you familiar with RPG Design Camp? They've had two successful Kickstarters in the past year, and run the project in a collaborative way with their backers. It's intended to be similar to the Open Design process, and features some of the former Open Design patrons/designers.

How many people have launched their own carriers after jumping onboard with the early Open Design scheme?

Hi all. Huge fan of the old Patronage projects though I was late to the concept, only joining toward the end of Dark Deed and Midgard. I had a lot of fun during the Journeys to the West development. The old forums were full of back and forth on story, site and theme development. I miss that as the Kickstart have less crowd interaction in that style.

Thanks Old Man.

I think it's a shame those old forums went down.

We have a growing community here, and obviously I'd love to see more Midgard fans (old as well) come here, but not at the expense of an existing community (especially one with a ton of conversations in the era where parts of the setting were still being built).
...

That implies there could have been some sort of "proto-Midguard" that Wolfgang Baur was working on privately.

Does anyone know about homebrew gaming sessions that Wolfgang Baur ran that included elements later recycled as part of Open Design or Kobold Press products? Is it possible to point to any old notes and identify pre-commercial origins of the setting?

I've heard Wolfgang Baur speak in several podcast interviews. My recollection is that Midgard has been his home brew setting since the AD&D days. He incorporated elements of it into his work while he was at TSR. For example, Dragon Magazine #70 has an adventure called "Kingdom of the Ghouls" by Wolfgang Baur. This empire of ghouls was later fleshed out in an early Open Design product, and then featured in the Midgard Campaign Setting.

Are you familiar with RPG Design Camp? They've had two successful Kickstarters in the past year, and run the project in a collaborative way with their backers. It's intended to be similar to the Open Design process, and features some of the former Open Design patrons/designers.

How many people have launched their own carriers after jumping onboard with the early Open Design scheme?

I don't know the exact number, but there are at least a handful of designers who got their start with Open Design and later Kobold Press opportunities. Kobold Press has been great about accepting pitches from brand new designers, allowing them to get their foot in the door.

I guess it might be easier to ask which Open Design products were not incorporated into Midgard.

I don't think any of the Open Design products couldn't be incorporated into Midgard. Some may not be explicitly set there, but I'm not aware of anything that would exclude those products from the possibility of being in Midgard.

I guess it might be easier to ask which Open Design products were not incorporated into Midgard.

I don't think any of the Open Design products couldn't be incorporated into Midgard. Some may not be explicitly set there, but I'm not aware of anything that would exclude those products from the possibility of being in Midgard.

The Red Eye of Azathoth, the ninth project, specifically set on Earth and using Call of Cthulhu rules?

But yeah, I think everything, barring that and Dark Deeds in Freeport, the 15th project, are explicitly set in Midgard.